The
battle between music and movie studios, internet users, and ISPs has
raged for years. The content producers claim they are fighting to
protect their copyrights while major web properties like Google's
YouTube say that they are doing all they can to prevent pirated
videos and content from being posted on their sites.

In 2007,
media giant Viacom
sued Google and YouTube alleging that YouTube knowingly
allowed pirated video to be posted online violating copyright. Viacom
sought damages of $1 billion. The legal battle raged on and in July
of 2009, a judge in the case dismissed
some of the damage claims Viacom alleged in the case. The
judge ruled that damages were not available for content produced
outside America. In March 2010, it was discovered that after the suit
was filed Viacom managers had still been uploading
video to YouTube and some had even tried to hide their
tracks.

Reuters reports
that Google and YouTube have
now prevailed in the Viacom copyright suit. A federal judge
in Manhattan has thrown the Viacom suit out saying that it would be
improper to hold Google and YouTube liable under copyright law for
merely having "general awareness" that illegal videos might
be posted on the site.

Judge Louis Stanton wrote in his
30-page ruling, "Mere knowledge of prevalence of such activity
in general is not enough. The provider need not monitor or seek out
facts indicating such activity."

Viacom plans to appeal
the verdict to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals and calls the
ruling "fundamentally flawed." Viacom alleges that the
decision doesn't reflect recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions or the
intent behind the current copyright law. Reuters reports
that Google has argued it is protected under the Safe Harbor
provision of the digital copyright law that limits the liability of
ISPs and providers.

Analyst Benjamin Schachter from Broadpoint
AmTech said, "Certainly for Google, there's been so many
regulatory and legal negative headlines about them, so to see them on
the winning side of something will certainly be a positive."

Judge
Stanton noted that the Safe Harbor notification provision works
efficiently in this case. Viacom notified YouTube on a Friday in 2007
of 100,000 infringing videos and "virtually all" of the
videos were off the site by the following Monday.

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